Let’s share our positive stories

Last Sunday, I attended the Thanks-Giving Service of one of our national icons, JH Mensah, at the Christ the King Catholic Church in the Jubilee House enclave of Accra. The church service was billed to begin at 10:30 am. I arrived by 9:30 am with the purpose of mournfully greeting familiar faces and socializing a bit before the service began. I finally settled down in a pew at 10 am. I was very relaxed and ready for any level of lateness drama—the Ghanaian way.

At exactly 10:30, the un-Ghanaian thing happened! The service began—right on time. It was very impressive; and it was very Ghanaian! The message to me was very clear: Ghanaians can also be on time. By extension, Ghanaians can also do things right. At even a much deeper level, Ghana can work for us all to make us happy so we will stop the constant bickering about how nothing works well. It all resides in the attitude and determination to make things work. 

The incident kept me thinking: Was that a one-off case of being exactly on time? Or it is in the DNA of Christ the King Church to start programmes on time as advertised? If it is in the DNA of the Church to do things right, to what extent does that affect everything it does as an institution? It will even be more revealing if this good DNA has permeated the lives of the members of this church congregation and by extension, other Catholic churches.

Goodness can beget goodness! Imagine if the positive story of church services beginning on time at Christ the King positively permeates Ghana! And we decide that we will collectively, from henceforth, have zero tolerance for lateness, for mediocrity, for corruption, for potholes, for laziness, and for all our other funky narratives. And then as we increase the number of things we do right, we go out there to share the favourable stories! 

I believe that there is a restorative power in good stories. The restoration may exhibit itself through momentary cheers and good feelings, or deeply-ingrained hope that can lift the spirit and spur people on to higher, bigger, better and awesome accomplishments.

AS IFTHE SKY IS FALLING!

The headline of a recent PEW Research finding screamed: “One-in-five or more adults in Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa say they plan to move to another country”. Specifically, according to the Global Attitudes Survey,a staggering 42% of adult Ghanaians indicated that they plan to move to another country in the next five years. 

It probably does not matter where they are going; they will just take off! They are dreaming of leaving this fine country behind—the land of their birth; the land of birth of their mothers, fathers, grandparents. They may become our own 21^stCentury explorers who seek to conquer new lands away from the west coast of Africa—as economic migrants.

For 42% of adult Ghanaians to entertain thoughts of migration suggests that if we were to roll back the clock to the peak of the Transatlantic slave trade in the late 18^thCentury, and slave ships had berthed on our shores, there might not have been any need to forcefully capture people since they would have willingly stampeded into the slave ships to be transported out of our land. Our royal countrymen/women would have handed themselves over with the plea, “Take me; take me! Hear I am!”

Yes, when we look at all sectors of our society, it may be difficult to pinpoint aspects that are above reproach, bitter criticism and condemnation; and of which we are very proud. From sanitation, pot-holed roads, street lights, electricity, unemployment, lousy hospital system and social services—we openly express dissatisfaction with the state of affairs. 

Our four-year political campaign cycle provides too many opportunities for us to be over-promised. And easily and predictably, the promises are not fulfilled, resulting in the rude violations of our expectations. So over time, we have become peeved and frustrated; so complain a lot. 

We are very smart and alert people so know what is possible; and of our national potential. We know that God had indeed blessed our homeland Ghana with gold, crude oil, diamond, bauxite, fertile lands and many others. Unfortunately, although we can envision better days, we constantly hear of our money being squandered. In what appears to be a heightened state of disappointment, some people seem to have given up on Ghana. Everyone has a breaking point. And that explains why people will consider their departure from the known to the unknown. May be they are eager to get out of here alive before Ghana kills them! 

NO WHERE COOL!

Tro-tro owners of old used to inscribe the most profound quotes on their vehicles. One of my favourites was: “Nowhere cool”. To wit, the “aburokyiri” we hunger after is not heaven. Hopelessness drives people into the Sahara desert and into dingy boats to cross the Mediterranean Sea, en route to Europe to seek for greener pastures. You may arrive in Europe or USA only to meet racism face-to-face. Truly, there’s no place like home!

But let the truth be told: our current public narratives are depressing—to say the least. Constantly, we are telling ourselves that nothing works; that Ghana is a failure. Some people even go to the extreme of maintaining that Ghana is a failed state. No, Ghana has not failed! Yes, we have problems (who doesn’t!). So clearly, the sky is not falling on Ghana. We have challenges that are not impossible to resolve. 

Chances are that we might be suffering from a national ailment of exhaustion that is borne out of disappointment. The negativity is palpable and cuts through the pains in national discourse. If we found psychologists to examine us, it might be established that most of us are depressed. How do you build a nation with a bunch of depressed people who whip up negative sentiments from sun-up to sun-down? We need national healing from negativity!

SAVE THE SOUL OF GHANA 

Just like in any other society, we in Ghana too have multiple stories—the good, the bad and the ugly. The more we condemn Ghana, the more likely we are to create self-fulfilling prophesies. Ghana cannot continue like this with this overdose of negativity. It is not healthy for the soul. It is tiring.

Whilst we fix all that do not work well, we will need to reset the buttons and share favourable stories about our Ghana. We should ‘shine our eyes’ to take note of the positive stories and tell other people about them as in: “Wow! I just noticed this fine road without potholes!” “The customer service I received from XYZ Company was 1^stclass!” When we notice the little but great and good things, instead of the horrible and ugly, we may save the soul of Ghana.

dorisdartey@gmail.com

The way we do cover ups

The round-bellied spider, Kweku Ananse, may still be very much alive and up to his folkloric tricks across our national psyche. With wisdom and trickery, he may be operating on both the national and personal levels to outwit people. When we do things to impress owing to an insatiable sickening need to look important, we could easily end up being deceitful and pretentious. The following are some of the ways in which the application of trickery and deceit are hurting our nation.

ELECTION FUNDING AND NATIONAL THEFTS

If we lift the veil off our very expensive four-year cycle national electioneering campaigns, we may stare right into the eyes of national thefts. Methinks that the still unravelling banking collapse stories may be the offshoot of political campaign corruption. 

The bank collapse stories began to unravel after the 2016 elections. If we connect the dots well, we may be able to establish that some of the money we lost was used to finance campaigns. If we analyse the beneficial owners and connected parties of the banks, we may pin-point several over-exuberant political apparatchiks who did their masters’ will to fund campaigns, and whilst doing so, personally enriched themselves.   

In effect, electioneering campaigns provide opportunities to chop our national money. The fun fair of elections may very well be cover-ups for stealing national funds. The super-sized billboards, the jingles, television, radio and newspaper advertisements, the V8 vehicular convoys that madly zip through the length and breadth of Ghana to display unexplained wealth – may all be tied to national thefts.

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

In these days of bank failures, the Kweku Ananse syndrome stares us in the face. Some words that are bandied around in the corporate world are ambiguous and could easily be used to cover-up the corporate truth. The fuzzy realms of business promotions, branding, and a monster known as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) offer opportunities for deceit. 

We should therefore pay much attention to companies that spend much money on sponsorships, business promotion, which could be signs of covering up something unseemly. All the seven failed banks were busy spending money on CSRs, branding, business promotions, and lobbying for praises.

What is in a name? Capital Bank has collapsed. The name did not help it. Or maybe it did in the sense that the owners of Capital Bank saw it as an opportunity to squander the capital until it was spent out in very irresponsible ways. Sovereign Bank lost its sovereignty (it never had sovereignty to begin with!). By its name, uniBank was supposed to be that one bank owned by our leading financial guru at the time (Dr Kwabena Duffuor) that will pass all understanding. But one man’s arms went around the bank and blew it up.

MAD RUSH FOR AWARDS AND DEGRESS

The craze for awards and titles is a sign of a fundamental emptiness that companies and individuals need to fill. It is almost a cry for help as in saying—true rewards take too long a time so why don’t we just use the back-road short-cut! Yes, it takes time to consolidate one’s accomplishments; for most people, it takes a life-time. The short-cut could happen through questionable awards that serve the purpose of concealing the real truth—which is emptiness owing to a lack of essence. 

In the past week, Albert (not his real name), a struggling young man I know called to share with me what he thought was a brilliant idea; his brain wave; his innovativeness; his way of solving a critical problem for Ghana because he had identified a gap. 

His idea was that although he acknowledged that there are several awards, he also wanted to set up an award scheme in journalism. He needed my advice and support! I tried to be polite! I told him tenderly that he has no locus to even entertain such thoughts so he should rather focus on his career because there are more than enough awards schemes and there is zero room for more. 

I am sure that he will try to go ahead to explore this lame idea. If he succeeds, there will be 100s of journalists who will salivate to receive such awards. And with that, Albert will also fill up some of the void in his life and feel good about himself. In effect, the awards will by default, become the accomplishment in the absence of any real accomplishment. 

Closely related to the hunger for awards is the mad rush for degrees. Have you noticed that in the past decade or so, our country has experienced a mad rush for degrees? This madness has opened the floodgates for the business of tertiary institutions.

HERO WORSHIPPING

When we hero worship people, we cover-up. There are too many title-holders around. Honourable, Doc, Prof! These days, when I hear someone being addressed as Prof, I pause to figure out whether it is in reference to Professor of Prophet. Prof used to refer to only professors, but these days, prophets have entered the fray. 

And, there are numerous men of God (and a few women of God). Strangely, I have never heard anyone being addressed as a “man of satan/devil”. When we call a person “Man of God”, we deify that person. He is God; or His representative on earth. If you have God as your pastor, then you must truly be sorted out. When you deify a person, you could easily get to the point of not thinking around them; you hand over your relationship with the maker to this intermediary you have created.

Now one such men of God, Pastor Otabil, has a big red flag hanging over his head because of the role he played (or did not play) as the board Chairman of the defunct Capital Bank. His admirers and hero-worshippers are conflicted and struggling over what to do with this situation (to either stand with or against him). It must be very confusing for his followers that their own man of God is in a sticky situation. 

OBITUARIES

I get fascinated at the content of obituaries because of the showmanship display. Often, they display the who-is-who of the family, including extended- and non-family members. Family members outside Ghana are hot favourites in obituaries. This person is in the UK, that one is in the USA, another one is in Germany, France, and wherever. 

Some of these people might not even be doing much with their lives but they are abroad and therefore perceived to be important. They might not travel to Ghana for the funeral, or send one pesewa home to finance the funeral roll-out; but are abroad so mentioning them is supposed to raise the profile of the funeral from a local activity to one with high-level international and even global dimension. Eh, Kweku Ananse!

dorisdartey@gmail.com

A requiem for uniBank and cousins 

It is as if there has been a death in the family! The collapse of uniBank could be likened to the death of a vibrant young person, with immense promise and opportunities to make something spectacularly awesome out of life. The youthful person was supposed to be on track to make the entire family and village very proud, beyond measure. Even generations yet unborn were to gloat in the success story of this youth. 

Then suddenly, it was revealed that all along, the promise was a sham. It now appears that a humongous castle had been built on sand, and painted gorgeously. The painstaking décor deceptively covered up falsehoods. Then a mighty storm came and before our eyes, the sand castle had crumbled back into sand, from which it was built. Meanwhile, uniBank has morphed into Consolidated Bank.

WHY I BANKED WITH UNIBANK

Patriotism took me to uniBank and kept me there! Now my patriotism and related trust in “made in Ghana” has been shaken. When I was looking for a bank 12 years ago, uniBank was very attractive. Undoubtedly, the attraction was that it was owned by Dr Kwabena Duffuor, who was at different times, the Governor of the Bank of Ghana and the Minister of Finance – all within one decade. So what could go wrong?

Dr Duffuor was finely packaged as a financial guru. At a point, his signature was on Ghana’s cedi. It is a big deal to have one’s signature on a country’s currency! So what could go wrong? With such a supper-fly stature, a customer of uniBank would have no reason to suspect that a bank set up, owned and controlled by our leading financial guru at the time, could go wrong.

In the creation of the personality décor, it was said widely that Dr Duffuor was not taking any salary as a public servant; meaning he was working for Ghana for free. This further meant that the man was so solid financially that he declined to take our paltry sum of money. This also deeply meant that he was very patriotic so had laid down his life in the service of the mother/fatherland – for free. So what could go wrong? 

I was very proud of uniBank because it was engaged in good Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. For the past couple of years, it literally adopted Operation Smile, an organization I am associated with. Operation Smile brings in medical and other volunteers from various parts of the world to perform surgeries on people with cleft lips and cleft palates. 

Through the bank’s sponsorship of the surgeries, people who had suffered from stigma owing to birth defects gained their smiles back. And with the smiles came dignity. That was a very good thing uniBank did. I crossed paths with some of their executives during Operation Smile and I felt so proud that a Ghanaian-owned bank could help some hundreds of people to undergo the dignity-gaining and life-saving surgeries. So what could go wrong? 

UniBank was spreading very fast; and was opening branches across the country. It was probably the fastest-growing Ghanaian-owned bank. It was flying high! And oh, uniBank was winning banking awards! Nothing could have gone wrong! No, nothing! Yet, everything has now gone wrong – very wrong!

20/20 HINDSIGHT REVELATIONS

As the adage goes, hindsight is 20/20! As I write, my 20/20 vision of today tells me that there was a clear conflict of interest about Dr Duffuor opening a bank whilst he was a policymaker in the financial space. The government should have known! But then, who cares about conflict of interest in our national decision-making arena? For many, you could poke them in the eyes with conflict of interest and they will not blink; the wrong will be right.

Looking back, it appears that the fast growth, the awards and accolades, the Corporate Social Responsibility, and the super-high profile of uniBank and Dr Duffuor should have been the red flags to warn Ghana. 

You never expect to wake up on any ordinary day to hear that your bank – be it a full-fledged bank or a microfinance institution has collapsed and possibly, the owner has moved on with your cash, or that the benevolent Ghana Government had stepped in to take control of your bank. The details of the collapse of the seven banks this past year are unsettling to read. The stories shake one’s trust in the banking sector. With such revelations, you scratch your scalp even though you do not have dandruff or lies in your hair.

UniBank was insolvent. In the language of us lay-persons, uniBank was broke. It had gone bust; it was bankrupt; it had been ruined beyond measure. The figures given by the Bank of Ghana (representing the findings of KPMG’s analysis of the rot) revealed that without due process, the operators of uniBank had given out a whopping GHc5.3 billion to its shareholders, connected parties and cronies. 

So apparently, uniBank did not care about good corporate governance and its customers, let alone care about the laws of Ghana. The owners and managers used the bank as a piggy bank from which they dipped their hands to take, and give, and spend, and blow without regard to those of us who entrusted our money with them! All this while, the Bank of Ghana just sat there and did nothing. 

Is there a backstory that needs to be told? What really happened? Does Dr Duffuor have his own version of what went wrong, which may suggest that he did the right thing but someone choked him? Did Dr Duffuor knowingly and deliberately deceive me and other Ghanaians who saw uniBank as a great Ghanaian success story at entrepreneurship? Why has he not spoken? Has he lost his voice? Would uniBank have collapsed if the NDC had won the 2016 elections?

AN ABRUPT CONSOLIDATION

I have now morphed from uniBank into Consolidated Bank. The new bank has reached out to me (and the many other millions of customers of the five collapsed bank, which have been merged). The message I received reads, in part: “We warmly welcome you to Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited and are delighted at this opportunity to serve you. …..We remain dedicated to providing you with the exceptional client service… Our commitment to this is absolute…. Best regards, Daniel Addo, CEO.”

This message is supposed to make me feel better. But I am not feeling “warmly welcome”. I do not know what to do with the assertion: “Our commitment to this is absolute”. As I recall, the commitment of Dr Duffuor and his uniBank (and that of the other collapsed banks) was equally absolute. Or it wasn’t? So why didn’t the Bank of Ghana caution us to beware? Why should things be allowed to go so wrong?

dorisdartey@gmail.com